In current cardiac catheterization systems, the operating physician must often observe two different images simultaneously, on two different screens: 2D fluoroscopic images of the thorax and 3D maps of the heart. Such 3D maps may be generated, for example, using magnetic tracking of the catheter tip in the heart. Both the fluoroscopic images and the 3D maps may show the catheter, but from different angles and perspectives. Because of the lack of automatic registration and coordination between the fluoroscopic and 3D views, the physician is required to switch his or her attention back and forth between the displays and mentally register the different information that they contain.
Various methods are known in the patent literature for automatically registering a fluoroscopic image with a 3D map. Such methods are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,314,310, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference.
Documents incorporated by reference in the present patent application are to be considered an integral part of the application except that to the extent any terms are defined in these incorporated documents in a manner that conflicts with the definitions made explicitly or implicitly in the present specification, only the definitions in the present specification should be considered.